Imagination

Sorry, I haven't blogged in awhile. I have been on a scrapbook frenzy. I am now only one year behind in my pictures. Jimmy and a I were at my mother's yesterday and it was a beautiful springish day. Jimmy is finally getting over his cough that he had for 2 weeks and mysterious fever that came with it, because all he had was the cough, no strep, no earaches, no pneumonia. My mom had gotten a puzzle of the United States that she and Jimmy had looked at and read about each of the states. She gave him the idea that Florida looks like a gun (thanks Mom). Anyway he took the Florida piece and went racing outside to kill whatever bad guys were out there. Then he came in and I told him to go look under to Big Trees in the big part of Mom's yard. He went racing over there with Florida in hand searching for more bad guys. He came back and said there were traps over there. Then he said he needed some stuff to take back to the trees. So we loaded him up with Potato Heads in a back pack, and plastic food and fake coins in a lunch bag (so he could buy a horse). We watched him run back and forth for awhile and then he came back and told us he had caught a squirrel. He went back again and he must have eaten the squirrel, because then he laid down on on of his bags and went to "sleep". Then he got up and checked his traps. He came running back and said he had caught a deer and he was going to eat it for breakfast. Mom told him he needed to build a fire and skin the deer and he told her he had already built a fire. He went over and got his deer out of the "trap". He carried it over on his shoulders and threw it down on the fire. He then got one of the potato heads out and threw it on the fire. Then he sat and ate his breakfast. He then got a carrot potato head out of the bag and started gnawing on it. Then he went over by the mailboxes with the lunch box and messed around for a bit and then all of a sudden he came galloping over and said he had bought a horse!!! He and Mom named it Tallahassee, because his gun was Florida. Tallahassee is also a girl we found out later. She is now tied up in front of Mom's house to her flower basket planter, because we had to go home. It was such fun to watch him use his imagination though. I have been worried about him, because he hasn't shown much imagination before and that is the way I grew up.

Kaye

Jimmy and Kristin's Birthday

This is Jimmy's b-day cake at the Barretts. I put Mini Transformers on it.

Legos!!!!

Jimmy is in a Transformer stage right now.

Blow out the candles.

This is Jimmy at home. We got him a Lego loader to go with the Lego dump truck Grandma and Grandpa Barrett gave him. I love his reaction.
Here it is.

Oh great, Pants.

This is the ginormous cake Eric got at Albertson's for Jimmy and Kristin.

Blow out the candles.

They did it. I think Jimmy had a pretty good birthday. We didn't have a party with any kids, but I don't think he cared. I can't believe he is six now. Wow!!!

Another Christmas Come and Gone!!

Well we had a good Christmas. This is the loot that Santa brought. The reason we have Cindy's stocking is because Mom wanted to teach her a lesson in being good (which she is not, she has stopped going to church) and so she brought Cindy's Santa presents to our house and gave Cindy a stocking full of coal at our house. I don't know if the lesson worked or not. Did it Cindy? Jimmy of course enjoyed every minute of his Christmas morning experience. He got what he wanted. Transformers!!!!

More X-mas loot.

Cindy's loot.

Santa ate the cookies and read Jimmy's book and left him a note.

Presents!!!!

More presents.

Megotron.

Starscream.

Grandma's Christmas socks.

Cindy finally got to come over in the evening and open her Santa presents. We spent the rest of the night singing.

Gingerbread Houses and Jimmy's Stage Debut

We made Gingerbread Houses a week ago. They were kits that came with everything. The Gingerbread already formed and cooked, the candy, the frosting and even the stand to put them on. It was fun. Eric concentrating.

Jimmy's Gingerbread Santa.

Helping Grandma with her house.

This Finished products.

This is Eric's and Jimmy's.

This is the one Grandma, Jimmy and I worked on. Grandma had to leave in the middle to go help take care of Grandpa Clark. He was having another nauseous spell.

This is Cindy's. She got a little frosting happy!!

This is from our Ward Christmas Breakfast. We of course had a nativity program with music and shepards and wise men and Mary and Joseph and ....... Jimmy the sheep. You can see him lying on the ground looking at baby Jesus. The other little boy who was a sheep somehow only ended up with his ears on.

Then he decided to crawl around.Now he is just chilling. He made a great sheep!!!

Look what happens when we let Jimmy loose with the Camera and Grandma With Christmas Lights!!!

We actually get a picture of me. Jimmy did pretty good with his pictures. I am moving furniture around to decorate for Christmas. Mom is helping me move furniture and yes we are doing this on a Sunday. Eric and I had already put the tree up, but there wasn't very much room to walk between it and the couch, so my interior decorator (Mom) helped me figure out what to do with the couches.

This is the tree. It is a pre-lit with 400 white lights, plus I made Eric cram 700 colored lights on it. We call it the beacon. It looks fantastic from outside. We put the tree up on a Friday and we didn't get around to putting the decorations on it until Monday. All it had was lights on it. We were going to decorate it Saturday, but we were sidetracked by Kristin. It just wouldn't be a Thanksgiving weekend if Eric didn't have to go over and put Christmas lights up on Kristin's house. Kurt had actually done some, but of course he didn't finish. Their new house roof line is much friendlier than their old one and Eric didn't feel like he was going to fall off of the roof while he was putting the lights on. He did get scared when he went to get off of the roof though. There was quite a distance between his feet and the ladder. Kaitlyn had to guide his feet onto the ladder. I have never seen him scared of anything before, but he was scared. He is not afraid of heights and shimmying right to the end of the roof, but something about dangling his feet off of the edge was scary. He survived though. We also helped Kristin put her Christmas tree up and her tree looks very beautiful. I don't have pictures, but maybe she could post some on her blog.

This is what happens when we let Grandma loose with Christmas lights.

These pictures I took, not Jimmy. I am so thankful for my beautiful Front room (Celestial room or the Useless room) to put my Christmas decorations in. One of my obsessions in house hunting was having a front room window that you could see a Christmas tree in.

This is my Santa Crosstitch that took me 5 years to finish and I actually have room to hang it up.

A nativity set.Here is my beautiful tree.

Optimus Prime, A Gypsy, Raking the Leaves and Reading Books

Okay, I haven't posted in awhile. Life has been very crazy!!!! Jimmy was Optimus Prime for Halloween (Thank you Mom for finding his costume). Cindy came and went Trick-or-Treating with him and she was a Gypsy. Mom made the skirt for her. One of our neighbors thought Cindy was me and tried to talk to her and Cindy had to say she was my sister. That's kind of flattering (I guess). After Trick-or-Treating we went back to Mom's and roasted hot dogs and marshmallows with her and the neighbors who have one of those portable fire pits. It was pouring rain, so the neighbor on the end of the apartments had his big outside umbrella over the fire and we pulled out Kristin's broken decrepit umbrella that she gave Mom when she moved and we sat under them and celebrated Halloween. Eric had to sit and hold Kristin's umbrella up every time a gust of wind would come by. Needless to say the umbrella bit the dust and is headed for the dump, because Eric duct taped it to get it to stay open and then he couldn't get it closed without breaking the spokes. It was the strangest Halloween I have ever had. We love our shade in our backyard, but it comes with a price. Leaves! Lots of Leaves!! We spent Saturday morning after Halloween raking leaves. As Eric and I would rake them Jimmy would leap into them and he also buried himself in them. It made him sopping wet, because the leaves were wet from the rain the night before. He was having lots of fun though.

This is Jimmy's Leaf Raking attire. Eric let him dress himself that morning.

For one of Jimmy's homework assignments he had to read to a Stuffed Animal. Well Jimmy being Jimmy he had to read to all of his Stuffed Animals.

Spooky Halloween Pumpkins

We had our annual Family Night of carving pumkins tonight with Mom and Cindy. Mom's is the first pumpkin. Mine is the next one and it is a Cat. Eric's is third and we have dubbed his "I"gor. Jimmy's is behind his head and it is a bat and Cindy's is the last one and it says Welcome.